


Folding Sheets

by Jordan_Marine



Series: Chasing Down the Gods [6]
Category: The Talon Saga - Julie Kagawa
Genre: Angst and Tradegy, Gen, Grief/Mourning, he's not dead but that's not important until part 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:08:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24312517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jordan_Marine/pseuds/Jordan_Marine
Summary: Reactions to the death of Dante Hill
Series: Chasing Down the Gods [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1195402





	1. Jade

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who finished high school? It's me. I finished high school, and am now ready to... apparently taking a gap year until corona leaves us alone. It's also coming up on the two-year anniversary of this series (yay!), so I've decided that, since I've finished the first draft of this story, it's a good time to post again. 
> 
> So... you know how we left off this series with no one knowing that Dante Hill is still alive?
> 
> I promise not to kill Dante Hill. :)

Yuu knew, in some twisted, horrifying way, that she was  _ lucky. _

When the temple exploded, she was already halfway up the mountain. She was able to shift and fly to the temple. It wasn’t in time to save him, her family, her starlight, her little brother who she had seen hatch. It wasn’t in time to kill Stealth, to find justice, _vengeance._ But she was lucky, because when she found him, he was still alive. On the ground, choking on his blood, but alive. She was able to curl around him. She was able to tell him that she loved him, and she was proud of him. She was able to make sure that Xinguang didn’t die alone. 

Her friends gave her enough time to lay his body out, fold his hands, smooth out the creases on his robes, and cover him in a thin layer of dirt. Both Tibetian and Mongolian cultures practiced sky burials, and Shen-Lungs didn’t have funerals or family tombs, but it still felt cruel to leave him alone on the face of a mountain. She knew she was lucky, because she didn’t have to hear of his death from an offhand remark, that  _ Lan and Yin also died during the night of the Talon attacks, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, but you never got along with her.  _ That at least she knew where he was laid to rest, even if there was no real purpose of graves. He wasn’t using his body anymore. He never would.

She watched Garret help Ember into the plane, watched Ember sink to the floor, and knew she was lucky, because she got a body at all.

She sat next to Ember as the plane rose. She didn’t want to speak, because Ember would look to her for comfort. She didn’t want to touch Ember’s grief, because she couldn’t handle it. She had her own. She had so much of it that it choked her.

The sky turned pink with sunset and the cabin lights turned on as night fell. No one seemed inclined to speak, even though Garret managed to coax a conversation out of Riley and Hamsah. Neither Ember nor Yuu broke the silence. She was fairly sure that Ember didn't want Yuu's grief the same way Yuu didn’t want Ember’s. But it helped, somehow, that she wasn’t alone. 

“I saw it happen,” Ember whispered. 

“I know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“They were close, weren’t they?” she asked. “Dante and Xinguang? By the end of— of— they were friends, right? They acted like friends.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think they’ll keep each other safe, wherever they are?”

“I don’t know.” Yuu would pray to her ancestors, but she couldn’t imagine Xinguang among them, watching over her. “I hope so.”

“I miss him.”

Yuu nodded.

“I didn’t know it would hurt so much.”

Yuu didn’t, either. Because she had loved Lan, but they hadn’t gotten along for centuries. They loved each other because they were sisters, and there wasn’t any other option. She had loved Xinguang because she had watched him grow up, because they had come to terms with their differences, because they had lost everything, but at least they lost it together. She was the older one. He was supposed to be the one to lay her to rest.

Yuu knew she was lucky, because she got seventy-six years with Xinguang as her brother. Ember only got sixteen.

It didn’t help, knowing she was  _ lucky _ . It felt like a mockery.

“I want to go home,” Ember said softly. “I— I know there’s a mission to finish—”

“Not for you,” Garret interrupted, just as softly. “We can keep going without you. Without… either of you, if you need time.” He looked at Yuu, expression twisting. “If you have any cousins, or friends that you want to stay with—”

“The only people who care for me are either in this plane or dead,” Yuu interrupted. Her voice sounded flat to her own ears. She looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap. She and Xinguang didn’t look at all similar in their human form, and she was lucky that she wouldn’t see him when she looked at herself in the mirror, but she didn’t have any pictures of him to remember. 

Ember didn’t have any pictures of Dante, either. At least they could share that tragedy.

“You all should leave,” she heard the words leave her mouth, but didn’t feel herself speak.

“Jade…” Riley breathed.

“Stealth has the names and locations of all the known families of China and Mongolia. There’s not much left to be done, other than evacuating as many people as we can. That is something that  _ I  _ must do,” Yuu continued. “You are needed in America. I’ll… call. I’ll send over families, when I can. Kill any Vipers that come in my path.”

“You’re a loose string. Stealth is going to do everything she can to kill you,” Riley said.

Ember snorted beside her. She didn’t speak, even though everyone was staring at her. She just leaned on Yuu’s shoulder, drawing her knee to her chest. Dully, Yuu noted that the position would hurt, with a bullet wound to the abdomen. She wondered if Ember was feeling any pain. She wondered if she had taken painkillers, and if they could numb everything she didn’t want to feel.

Less dully, she remembered the calm that opium brought her when she was younger, the high where she didn’t have to feel a thing, and realized that she couldn’t hurt her family by her choices when her family was dead.

“Ember?” Garret asked.

“I think that Stealth already killed both of us.”

Yuu couldn’t agree more.

*

Something beyond humans or dragons must have decided to give Ember a tablescrap of mercy, because when she fell asleep, she didn’t have any nightmares. Yuu wondered how long that would last. She wondered about a lot of things: Western burial rituals that they hadn’t followed for Dante, how belief in reincarnation fit into ancestor worship, how her mother used to tell her that she would always,  _ always  _ have family to come back to, no matter what she did. She wondered how many families she could contact before someone killed her. She wondered how many Vipers she could kill in return.

“I think that everyone wants to go home,” Garret said softly. He sat down next to her, keeping a respectful distance, like grief was contagious. “But I don’t like the thought of leaving you here alone.”

“I’m not that fragile. I suggest you focus on Ember. She hasn’t lost anyone who she’s loved before. I have.” 

Yuu wondered if her past experience was luck or misfortune.

“Look after Riley as well. He’s fooling no one.”

“Jade…”

“I have made my choice, Garret. Someone has to stay behind, and this is my home. It is not yours.” It wasn’t hers, either. She settled in a temple in Tibet, but that was burnt to the ground, and she had never been able to stay there for long anyway. “I will not be gone forever.”

Garret pursed his lips into a thin line. “You and Ember could use each other right now.”

Yuu thought back. The first time she had met Dante, he had been cleaning the stove, anxious and confused. He had been a smart kid, a good kid, but desperate to hang onto ideals that didn’t suit him. Desperate to prove himself a good son and a good brother, but unable to do both.

Even then, he had reminded her of Xinguang. It was no wonder that they became friends.

“I cannot leave. Not yet,” Yuu responded. There were still families to save, people to rally, Vipers to kill. She still had to go to the Naiman Clan and tell them that Xinguang wouldn’t be coming back to them. 

She wondered how long it would take before Riley called the farmhouse and told his friends that Dante wouldn’t be coming back to them, either.

*

They spent two days at Chensha’s abandoned house. Garret managed to go from talking  _ at  _ Ember to talking  _ to  _ Ember, even if the conversation was sparse. Riley and Hamsah sparred whenever they had spare time, and it didn’t seem to help, but it left them exhausted, and that was the next best thing.

Ember started talking to Jade, first to ask her to come back to the farmhouse, then to faultily coordinate communication between her and the underground, then to share memories of Dante and Xinguang. It hurt to remember, because she knew that these were the  _ only  _ memories she had left, and she wouldn’t be getting any more. But she couldn’t forget. She wasn’t allowed.

_ “I got this haircut for him, you know. We were twelve. His hair used to be long, and he was worried about cutting it without permission, so I cut his and then chopped all of mine off with safety scissors. It was uneven and unprofessional as hell, and I don’t think they even noticed Dante over their screams at me.” _

_ “When he was twenty he lived with Lan. It was one of my worse years; I hadn’t talked with Mother in months, and I spent most of my time in Beijing, but I travelled to that temple and took him out for a night in the village. It was the New Year’s celebration, and it was just the two of us. He was obsessed with the shadow puppet theater. I don’t think he had ever seen it before” _

_ “I learned English first. I think it was the only thing I learned first, actually, other than astronomy facts that no one wanted me to know. God, he was brilliant. And unrepentantly obnoxious about it, too.” _

_ “I tried to get him to go on one of my journeys with me, and he nearly did. I wanted to show him Rome. I think he would’ve gone, if things were different. I think he wanted to.” _

_ “There’s this… about three-year gap in my memory, where I have absolutely nothing, except this one memory of me flying straight into a fence and Dante cackling somewhere outside of my vision. That’s it. It’s all I have. And I’m so grateful I have it.” _

_ “I was the only person in our family who would drink Xinguang’s tea after he settled in Mongolia. They said he ruined it. He did, but he made it with love, so I couldn’t say no.” _

It hurt to remember. To share. Part of her wanted to take all of her memories and put them in padded crates, so nothing could damage them or make them anyone’s but hers. But there was also the part of her that wanted to make sure that, if something happened to her, they wouldn’t be lost. They wouldn’t be gone. His life wouldn’t be forgotten.

*

After two days, Yuu managed to convince her friends to leave her behind. Riley managed to convince her to have habitual calling times in return. If she missed two in a row, they’d send someone back to China to find her. And she knew that Riley’s insistence was his way of showing that he cared, because he could care  _ so much  _ about every little thing, but she wanted to snap at him that now wasn’t the time to get attached to a Xuan.

She didn’t snap. She doubted he was in a place where he could take that. Or take much of anything, anymore.

The night before they left, Yuu found a stash of cigarettes in Chensha’s bedroom. Not her drug of preference, but she knew better than to turn back to her old habits, now. It wouldn’t do anything but slow her down and kill her faster. She still had things to do.

Nicotine didn’t hurt, though. It was calming, sitting on the porch, looking at the stars.

She thought about her Starlight, and the Lung Miao, and sky burials, and an Inferno that was smothered under stone.

“Pretty night.”

Yuu didn’t turn around, so Hamsah sat beside her. She furrowed her brow slightly. His hair had grown over his tattoo completely, and he had taken scissors to the other side, leaving it its natural dark brown. He looked different, without it. Older. 

“Are you here to tell me that I should go back to America?” Yuu asked.

“No,” he shook his head. “I can’t ask you to go back when Stealth is still out there.” He pursed his lips. He looked at his hands, clenching them into fists. “She was my teacher.”

“I know.”

“I wasn’t ready to kill her.”

“I know.”

“I am, now,” he said. Yuu blinked. “I… can’t go back there, either. I can’t face Kain Broussard and Astatine Lopez, after what I’ve— what happened. Not with  _ her  _ still out there.” He clenched his jaw. “I don’t want to be this. I never did. But… the underground needs people who can kill ruthlessly, now more than ever. I understand that, now. I can kill her.”

“And if you do?” Yuu asked. “It won’t bring back your friend, or my brother.”

“But it’s one step towards a world where no one else will die like that,” Hamsah said. “And it’s a step towards a life where I don’t have to be what she made me.”

“She’s a loose end for you,” Yuu said.

“Yes.”

“I assume you’ve spoken to Riley about this?”

“Yes. He doesn’t like it, but he knows he can’t stop me. He prefers the thought of us being together, though. We’ll have someone watching our backs, at least. Keeping us safe.”

Jade nodded. A few weeks ago— a few days ago, really— she would have protested. She would have told him that he couldn’t run away from his friends, that chasing down his past for the sole purpose of killing her would only lead to more pain, that he was too young to be in a strange country with a language he barely spoke. She knew that what he was doing wasn’t healthy by any stretch of the term. But that was before the last of her family died. Ember and Riley needed to go home, to recover without the weight of a mission resting on their head. Yuu needed to finish the mission before she could rest. And Hamsah did, too.

She supposed that she was lucky, that she still had friends to live for.

“It will be good to have you,” she said. 

“Thank you, Xuan Yuu.”

She blinked at the name.

“Jade.” Her mother had given her the name Yuu, two hundred years ago. It was the name that Lan knew her by, that Xinguang knew her by, that the Elder Council called her. 

It was the name that the dead remembered her by.

“Xuan Jade,” Hamsah said softly. 

By morning, both of them were gone.


	2. Wesley

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May 27 marked two years of writing Chasing Down the Gods

“Okay, I’m going to be the one to address the elephant in the room, because apparently no one else is about to: how the  _ fuck  _ are you funding this?”

Wes raised an eyebrow. Tristan raised one back.

“For someone with a TBI that targeted language comprehension, you talk a lot.”

“It only made listening to people difficult, not talking,” Tristan responded. “I have noticed you use an American accent around me, by the way.”

“And I’ve noticed that you can’t understand me when I speak with my real accent.”

“Touchée.” Tristan looked down at the papers Wes had spread across his desk. Over the past few weeks, he had decided that he could put up with Tristan. For a twenty-one-year-old and a soldier of St. George, he wasn’t horrible company. He didn’t make Wes feel actively in danger, at least. He had the respect to leave his weapons at the door before he came in for liason purposes.

He and Mist were trying their best, and they were making Wes’ job marginally easier. He’d give them that.

“Riley and I have a reserve. Before I left Talon, I was working under one of the higher ups, and I found the codes to one of his bank accounts. So the night before I left, I drained it and moved it to an offshore account.”

“You stole from a dragon?”

“Yep. He was a multi-billionaire.”

Tristan stared. 

“I heard that wrong, didn’t I? I heard billion. With a  _ B.  _ Multi-billionaire. In one account.”

“You heard right.”

“In  _ one  _ account?”

“A four-hundred-year-old dragon hates me personally, now.”

Wes’ cell rang, showing Riley’s number on the screen. Normally, Wes would be relieved to see his partner’s number, because that meant he was alive, but it sent a chill up his spine. Riley had been getting worse at adhering to their call times. The last time Riley called him, it was because he set himself on fire. The time before that, he had just finished an interrogation. 

“Hey, mate, you haven’t touched base in a few days, what’s happening?”

_ “Hey.” _

Wes closed his eyes. So things were bad.

_ “I messed up,”  _ his voice was the voice he used after nightmares.  _ “I messed up and I can’t fix it.” _

Wes took a deep breath, forcing his voice to stay level, because Riley obviously wasn’t going to be the reasonable one in this conversation.

“That’s why you don’t work alone anymore,” he said. “What happened?”

_ “There— there was a raid in the Lung Miao. Stealth has the census. The Elder Council is… dead. Xinguang is dead.”  _ There was a long pause.  _ “Dante’s dead.” _

Wes’ breath caught, and he glanced over to the one other person in the room. Tristan straightened, jerking his head towards the closed door, like he’d leave the moment Wes asked. Wes shook his head. Tristan would have to know, anyway.

“When?”

_ “A few days ago. I should’ve called you earlier, I know I should’ve, but I couldn’t. I— I don’t think I’ve been all here for the past few days.” _

Riley should’ve called. He knew better than to call sporadically, because that was how Talon killed people and their best friend only figured it out three weeks later, because both of them were probably clinically paranoid, and because they hadn’t actually been separated for this long in a decade. Wes wanted to latch onto the fact that Riley hadn’t called more than anything else, because everything else was that the mission had  _ failed  _ and people were  _ dead  _ and Riley was scared.

“Do you know where Stealth is?” he said instead, because immediate safety was the most important thing to consider in these situations.

_ “No. _ ”

“Is anyone close to dying?”

_ “No.”  _ He wasn’t crying. Riley didn’t cry over dead people. Wes almost wished he would.  _ “Uh… We’re coming home. Ember’s not fit for… anything, right now. Garret’s coping fairly well, but we can’t depend on him to keep us together. And— And Jade isn’t coming back with us. She’s going to try to get as many families out of China as possible, and… probably try to kill Stealth, even if she won’t admit it to us.”  _

“What? She’ll get herself killed, Riley! You  _ know  _ Stealth—”

_ “I tried to stop her. I tried, I—”  _ his voice cracked. Wes flinched.  _ “Hamsah’s going with her. I tried to talk him out of it, but I don’t… he said that if I didn’t let him stay, he’d run away the moment he got home, and you know he can do it.” _

Wes went cold.

“Riley, no. We’re not letting a member of our underground go off on his own in bloody  _ China,  _ he’s facing  _ super elite Vipers,  _ we couldn’t kill Stealth  _ ten years ago,  _ and he has emotional connections to her—”

_ “It’s not my choice. _ ”

“We can’t—” Wes ground his teeth. He wanted to scream. He wanted to march over to China himself and try to yell some sense into Jade and Hamsah  _ both,  _ because they needed to keep themselves safe and what the  _ hell  _ was he supposed to tell everyone waiting for them?

Kain and Astatine. What was he expected to tell them? That their friend wasn’t coming home, and Dante Hill was  _ dead? _

God, he was dead.

“I am so sick of losing hatchlings,” Wes said. It was better than saying that he knew the names of every hatchling that had died on their watch, that he could name them in his sleep, and he didn’t want to add  _ Hamsah  _ to that list when he already had to add  _ Dante Hill.  _ It was better than saying that he still blamed himself for Jem’s death, because he couldn’t work fast enough. He had never lost a hatchling when they were under his medical care before her.  _ Never. _

_ “I know, _ ” Riley whispered.  _ “I hate it, too. After everything I— I did here, and I did a lot, I put up with so much and I think I was a good fucking sport about it. But we didn’t do enough to change shit and we can’t— I can’t make anything any better.” _

“Riley—”

_ “I feel like I’m going insane.” _

The line echoed with static. Tristan was still staring at him, eyes wide. Wes remembered that Tristan had nearly died for Dante Hill. Dante Hill, who was dead a month later.

There wasn’t time to think about that, right now. He had to get their party— what was left of them— home. He had to make sure they weren’t followed. He had to make sure no one would  _ actually  _ go insane. And he had to trust that Hamsah and Jade would be able to take care of themselves, because they weren’t his responsibility anymore. There was time for emotions after.

“You’re not going insane, mate. If you were going to go insane, it would’ve been twelve years ago. You need to come home. We’ll sort it out when you’re not under threat of… assassination.” Wes said. He registered that he’d probably need to lead the underground for a few months while Riley recovered and pushed that thought to the side as quickly as it came, because it was not the time to be anxious about it. He could deal with that  _ later.  _ “Do you have his body?”

_ “No. The— the temple collapsed. Took him with it. I— I couldn’t do anything, I tried to do everything, but it was… _ ” There was a pause.  _ “We’ll be home in forty-eight hours. There will be families from Asia arriving. Dante and Xinguang were the only— the— I’m so sorry.” _

“What… are you sorry for?”

Riley hung up.

Wes took several minutes to remember how to breathe.

Dante had killed five of his hatchlings.  _ He  _ had killed Jem more than Wes ever could. He had also destroyed the Vessel labs, and tried to help East Asia even when no one except for Jade ever helped  _ them,  _ and he was…

He was Wes’  _ patient,  _ goddammit. 

“Mr. Higgins?”

“Never call me that again,” Wes snapped. He sunk back into his chair and put his head in his hands. 

Dante was dead. Xinguang was dead. He had lost another hatchling, and Hamsah might never come back, because something he had learned when trying to get hatchlings out of Talon was that Viper defects were always,  _ always  _ unstable. Jade had lost her brother. Ember had lost her brother. Wes had just said that Riley wasn’t going insane, but he only half-believed it.

He was going to be the one who had to tell the underground.

He was so tired.

“How much of that did you understand?” Wes asked, his American accent hard on his throat.

“Who died?”

“Xuan Xinguang, Jade’s brother. And… Dante Hill.” Wes forced himself to look at Tristan. “I know you were visiting him.”

“I was.” Tristan was horrible at hiding his emotions, but Wes didn’t care to read them. Tristan St. Anthony was  _ not  _ his problem. He was Martin’s problem and Garret’s problem, and Wes already had so many people to care for that he was  _ not  _ going to help this soldier who had decided to die for Dante Hill. Not his job. Not his responsibility. He  _ couldn’t  _ take that on.

“Riley, Ember, and Garret are all coming back to the farmhouse. Jade and Hamsah are staying in China to do what they can. We don’t know how long they’ll stay.”

Tristan nodded. “Is anyone injured?”

“Not physically, at least,” Wes muttered. Tristan furrowed his brow. “No. They aren’t.”

Tristan made no move to leave the room, but averted his gaze to the papers on the desk. They seemed so unimportant.

“What happened?” Tristan asked.

“An attack that they weren’t expecting. Dante got caught in the explosion,” Wes replied. He gave a long sigh and put his head back in his hands.

He wasn’t the type of person to cry over dead people, either. He hadn’t been for a long time.

He tried to think of everything that he needed to handle. Getting everyone home safely. Coordinating with Jade, coordinating with St. George and East Asia, double-checking to keep Vipers off their territory. Telling Astatine and Kain. Making sure that they didn’t do anything stupid. Making sure that  _ Ember  _ didn’t do anything stupid. Keeping Riley from actually going insane, because they still needed Riley. Possibly regrouping and sending a team  _ back  _ to East Asia, because there were eight elite Vipers that they could take down, and that would keep everyone safer. Finishing hashing out their financials, because the world didn’t stop when one of his hatchling’s died, it never would, he couldn’t let himself stop, either.

Wes squeezed his eyes shut, took a breath, and decided to think about what needed to be done before the end of the day, because he could not,  _ could not  _ handle anything else.

“St. Anthony.” His voice wavered, and he blamed it on his  _ stupid  _ accent he had to use to be understood.

“Yes?”

“Kain is pale-skinned, black-haired, missing an eye. Astatine is the one who keeps sparring with Williams. I need both of them in here within… ten minutes.”

“Lieutenants Martin and Ward need to know the mission is dead, too.”

“I’ll tell them by 6:00. You just find my kids.”

“Okay.”

He didn’t watch St. Anthony as he left. He kept his head in his hands and tried to think.

He was so,  _ so  _ tired of losing his kids. They never should have sent someone that vulnerable halfway across the world. Not when he was still healing.

Not when he  _ couldn’t  _ heal. Because Wes hadn’t done his job properly.

There wasn’t room to think about that. Wes stood and scrubbed his shirt sleeve over his face, as if he’d actually been crying. And he thought about what he’d say when two of his kids came in. How’s he’d break the news that their friends wouldn’t be coming back.

That was  _ all  _ he thought about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What? You thought that Riley's mental breakdown was forgotten??? There are no stops on the pain train, my friends. I can promise you that no one is enjoying this.


	3. Tristan

Dante Hill was dead. And Tristan…

Tristan was used to the feeling of denial, so he knew exactly what he was feeling when he tracked down pale-skin and scars. Kain. Glaring boy. He was in denial, because he wasn’t given a  _ body,  _ he wasn’t  _ there  _ when the attack occurred, and Dante was alive the last time they talked. So there was no reason for Dante Hill to be dead.

There was no reason for Tristan to be upset about it, either. The guy dropped a chapel on him. An entire goddamn chapel.

He told Kain to find Astatine and talk to Wes, and he didn’t wait for a response before leaving the farmhouse. He shielded his eyes and squinted past the sun as he walked to the barn. Soldiers weren’t exactly  _ welcome  _ in the nesting area for the Bermuda girls, but he wanted to find someone. Someone would want to know.

“Mist?”

Tristan opened the barn door cautiously, setting down his sidearm before he stepped in. He could hear rustling of hay and a faint growl that set his hair on end, but there wasn’t any hostile movement. They knew better. He knew better. 

“I’m Tristan St. Anthony, looking for Mist Anderson, does anyone know where she might be?” he said, and tried to ignore how strange they sounded coming out of his mouth. He was thankful he could speak at all, and that according to everyone else, he sounded normal, even if his accent was a good bit heavier than he had trained it to be. Everything was distorted, even after a fair month of recovery.

A dark, selfish bitterness welled up in his chest, that he had taken a knife to the head for Ember’s brother and it only made a month of difference.

“I’m here,” Mist called. One of the stall doors opened as she walked up to him, not-quite touching him as she herded him outside. Tristan shivered even though it was above freezing temperature. “I was just checking in on Autumn. Is there something we’re needed for?” her eyes widened slightly. “We  _ didn’t  _ leave Wes and Ward in a…” She started speaking too quickly for Tristan to understand at that point, which did nothing to help his ever-present headache, but he got the jist of what she was asking.

“Mr. Higgins and Lieutenant Ward have yet to be alone together. As much as I respect the two of them, I think one of them would wind up dead,” Tristan said. Mist kept staring at him. Tristan sighed and pulled his flak jacket closer to his frame as they walked. “We got news from China. It came in while Mr. Higgins and I were talking through financials.” Which was another thing they needed to finish before the team returned. 

“Oh,” Mist said. “I’m guessing it isn’t good.”

“That obvious?”

“You’re steering us steadily away from the farmhouse. Either you’re planning on murdering me, or you want to be away from listeners,” Mist said. “So?”

It wasn’t the first time Tristan had to tell someone that their friend was dead; that was one of the less-cherished jobs of a high-ish ranking officer. He could taste the words in his mouth, but it was never easy to spit them out.

He hadn’t said goodbye to Dante. He had talked to Garret and given a  _ good luck  _ to Ember, but he hadn’t spoken with Dante. Out of everyone, he had assumed that he’d be the one most protected. And he had no idea how he felt about that.

“It’s a compromised mission,” Tristan said, wincing at how technical the words were. “I don’t have all of the information. Wes said that there was an explosion. Dante… didn’t make it out.” He swallowed. Mist didn’t break in her pace. “I know you and he had history.”

Mist was quiet. Tristan fought down the urge to wrap and arm around her as they walked, because she wasn’t one of his brothers-in-arms, he didn’t know if she needed comfort like that, or if she wanted it from him. He wasn’t her older brother. They had actually compared, and she was three weeks older than him.

He put a hand on her shoulder anyway. 

“We did,” she said, finally. “But it was very brief. We worked on a team.” Her expression twisted. “I…” and she was too soft to understand, sounds and syllables muddling together in his aching skull.

“Sorry?”

“Nothing. Sorry. It’s nothing. People die all the time,” she shrugged his hand off. Tristan let her, and didn’t call out the lie. “How are you?”

“It’s complicated,” Tristan decided on. When he glanced behind him, the farmhouse was small. The dirt road was starting to turn to gravel under their feet. “I know I’m in denial right now, so… I think I’ll call this a grace period. I’m— I’m worried about Ember, though.” 

Those words took him by surprise, but when he thought about them, they were true. She was going to be inconsolable for a long, long time after this. And Garret, as much as she loved him, didn’t remember what it was like to lose family. That was a special sort of pain.

They kept walking. Mist kept her eyes on the horizon, her face a careful neutral that didn’t fool him for a second. He had never seen the point of learning how to shape his expression. He found that when it really mattered, masking never made much of a difference.

“Did you have siblings, before the Order?” Mist asked as the harvested cornfields hit the treeline. “Can you imagine how it feels for her?”

“Yeah,” Tristan admitted. “I had two brothers and a sister. I don’t remember my parents at all, but I remember them. All dead, now. But I certainly remember what it was like, suddenly being the only one. Did you?”

“We don’t get to have siblings in Talon. Ember and Dante are the only ones, and that’s because they’re clones,” Mist said. She sat down at the base of a fallen tree, scuffing the dirt with the heels of her boots. Tristan sat down beside her. The forest was quiet in the winter, so he could hear her breaths, coming out way too measured to be natural. “But for the first six years of our lives, we’re raised in a communal area. So I was close with one of them. She… was the third member of our group.” Tristan cocked her head to the side. “The group where I met Dante. She was there, too. And she died on that mission. And now Dante’s dead. And I’m… not.”

Tristan felt a pang, sharp and deep. It was a ghost of how he used to grieve, but it always happened, when he had to remember that he hadn’t  _ always  _ been an only child. He thought about the suicide mission he, Mist, and Dante had gone on, and wondered if Mist had figured out that she would probably be the one to outlive that group, as well.

Mist whispered something that Tristan didn’t catch. By the way she looked at him, she wanted him to understand, so he shook his head slightly.

“I was rooting for him. I hoped that he could truly be one of us,” she repeated. “He was a good kid. You don’t need to see him that way, but I know he was a good kid.” She rubbed her chest. Said something else that Tristan could hear, but couldn’t understand. He didn’t particularly need to, because he knew the pain that came with loss.

He had a feeling that Mist hadn’t lost very many people that she cared for, because he was way too used to the pain. It always found a home in his head, though, and he couldn’t tell how much of his pain was grief and how much was the remnants of his TBI.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said simply. “He was a good kid.”

“You don’t need to say that.”

“But he was.” Tristan shivered, breath coming out cloudy. “I probably shouldn’t think that, because of the Western Chapterhouse. I should probably care less. Or… maybe I should care more, because he’s my friend’s brother? I don’t know.”

“You’re not feeling even a little vindicated?” Mist asked, eyes crinkling slightly as she spoke.

Tristan snorted. “A sixteen-year-old is dead. And he killed twenty-one of my friends, but those friends killed plenty of dragons, and those dragons killed plenty of humans. It’s a fucked up cycle, we have going. And it just killed a sixteen-year-old. So no. I’m not feeling vindicated. I’m feeling…”

_ Sad. _

That’s what it was. It wasn’t relief that the person who had nearly killed him was dead, like part of him thought it should be. It wasn’t even apathy. But it wasn’t grief, either, like some other part of him— the one that cared about Ember, the one that fought Lilith to buy some time— wanted to feel. He was just  _ sad. _

Mist let out a shaky breath, nodding like she understood what he was feeling. He knew that she didn’t. What she was feeling was much worse. And no matter how bad she felt, it wasn’t a candle to how Ember was feeling, halfway across the world.

“I think we should get drunk,” she said.

“It’s not smart to get drunk when we’re upset, and I’m pretty sure it will tank my language comprehension,” Tristan warned, then followed with, “Carl has a stash of vodka, though, and doesn’t like me enough to tell me to deal with my emotions properly.”

“Excellent,” Mist stood. Pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, then shook herself out. As they began to walk back, she threw an arm around his shoulder. “I always liked vodka.”


	4. Kain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I was going to apologize for the slow update, but it's only been ten days, so... I'm not sorry. At the moment, I have two jobs and have been forcefully pulled into a 9k word oneshot that no one expected, least of all me.

Kain knew something bad was going to happen when soldier-with-an-accent— Tristan, he was pretty sure— willingly approached him; he wasn’t an idiot, and knew that Cobalt had told soldiers of St. George to steer clear of him. His words were short, clipped, and didn’t leave room for any conversation before he left Kain to try and find Astatine. He should’ve grabbed the soldier and demanded he tell him exactly what was going on, but he didn’t like pushing his luck around soldiers. He nodded, forced Sage to take over dinner plans, and found Astatine in her room.

“Hey, Astatine,” he greeted, hanging in the doorway and trying to give off an unconcerned air. “Wes wants to talk to us.”

“About what?”

_ Nothing good.  _ Kain didn’t say that. He didn’t know that for certain.

“Probably about how I’m a bad influence and goading you into sparring with soldiers. Which I’m not. That’s entirely your doing. You’re going to get yourself killed, you know, and Hamsah’s going to come back and kill  _ me  _ for letting you get shot by a soldier of St. George.”

Astatine rolled her eyes. “But before I get killed, I’m going to win one of these matches.”

“You haven’t won yet?”

“Hey, my vision is even worse than yours! Don’t judge!”

She followed Kain back down the stairs and through the mess of people in the living room. He tried to shake off the growing apprehension as he turned down the hallway. Wes tended not to talk to people unless they approached him first. Whatever this was, he wasn’t going to enjoy it.

But he couldn’t avoid it forever. He knocked on Wes’ door.

“It’s Kain. With Astatine.”

“Come in. Shut the door behind you.”

Wes was sitting at the desk, his computer turned completely off, organizing some papers into a stack. He stood when the door opened, and gestured for the two of them to sit at the foot of the bed. Which made Kain even  _ more  _ nervous, because the last time he made Kain  _ sit down  _ it was to tell him that he had removed one of his eyes. He didn’t want to sit down. He didn’t want to have this conversation. Definitely without anyone else in the room.

“Kain. Astatine.”

“Hamsah’s dead, isn’t he?”

Kain had  _ not  _ meant to say that. There was no doubt that Wes had spent the past few minutes figuring out exactly how to tell them that their friend had survived the Viper program and the night of Fang and Fire only to die halfway across the world at age eighteen. But that was the only reason that he and Astatine would be called in while everyone else was locked out. They were Hamsah’s only friends.

Kain felt a dark, familiar bitterness well up inside of him. Of course this would happen. Of course the universe would take Hamsah halfway through recovery, and would take Kain’s friend just as he started to properly put his  _ best friend  _ to rest. That was almost  _ laughably  _ predictable.

Wes closed his eyes, pain flashing over his face. “No. He’s… not the one that died.”

Kain furrowed his brow, opening his mouth to ask. And then he realized.

“Dante.”

There was a silence.

“There was an explosion. Dante didn’t make it out. Riley says that the mission’s been compromised, and they’re heading back.”

Kain pursed his lips, taking a careful breath. Hamsah wasn’t dead, and that was a relief. Dante wasn’t part of his life. He hadn’t been for two months, now. Nothing would change.

“Okay,” Astatine said, standing. Kain wasn’t great with emotions, but he knew masking when a fifteen-year-old was doing it badly. “If that’s all…”

“Sit back down,” Wes said shortly. 

Kain looked down at his hands, clenched in his lap. So Dante—  _ Dante Hill,  _ he could hear in Hamsah’s voice— was dead. The bastard that tried to kill him. And that played Uno with them. And was horrible at cooking. Why did he have to know so many things about him? He didn’t need to feel any pain over this. He didn’t deserve that. Dante was the bastard that disabled him, end of story.

There was still a dark, writhing,  _ familiar _ bitterness in his chest that made him want to laugh and hurt whoever came close to him. A bitterness that made sense for Hamsah, but he didn’t  _ want  _ for Dante.

“Hamsah has talked to Jade and Riley. He decided that, while Riley, Ember, and Garret come back here, he and Jade are staying. I’m not sure how long they’ll be—”

“ _ What. _ ” Astatine was still standing. Kain was suddenly not-quite in his body. “He’ll get himself killed!”

“Hamsah’s an adult, and he’s a fully trained Viper. It’s not my choice what he does, nor is it Cobalt’s.”

Kain was definitely not in his body anymore. Astatine was yelling, and Wes was responding in a too-calm voice, and Kain was not there for it. Yelling sounded nice. Yelling sounded better than one of his friends being in China— he hadn’t had a real friend since Isaac— or Dante being  _ dead _ — he hadn’t gotten closure for either of them— or him not being in his body, because he needed to be in his body. The fifteen-year-old beside him was screaming at Wes, and Kain needed to  _ be there,  _ because they had only known each other for a few months but suddenly Kain was her closest available friend, how could Hamsah  _ do this to them— _

And then Kain was blinking, and Astatine was quiet again. Or, not quiet exactly, but not screaming in Wes’ face. She was sitting on the floor, muttering quiet profanities, and Kain was still sitting with his hands clenched in his lap, and Wes was beside him, a hand rubbing his back. Like Kain was still freshly blind, and Wes was accepting the fact that everyone needed more than technical medical support.

“We weren’t friends anymore,” Kain said, and it sounded pathetic. “Me and Dante. I burned the bridge. I’m good at that.”

“I know.”

“I don’t care about him,” he spat, and it felt familiar. “I hate him. I  _ hate  _ him. I hope it fucking hurt. Jem and— and Remy and everyone else deserve that. Fuck,  _ I  _ deserve that, the lying, manipulating bastard.”

“Okay,” Wes didn’t tell him he didn’t mean any of it, or that it was rude to speak ill of the dead.

“And I’m not— I’m— Hamsah and Astatine are a package deal, I’m outside of that,” he said. “We’ve only known each other for a few months. I don’t owe either of them.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want to do this. I don’t  _ want this. _ ” And there were a lot of things that Kain could be talking about, and he was pretty sure he was talking about all of them. 

“You’ve done a lot that you’re not supposed to be able to do,” Wes said. He squeezed Kain’s shoulder. 

“Where the fuck was Cobalt in all of this?” he snapped, and  _ that  _ sounded like him, that felt better. “Isn’t he supposed to keep us  _ safe?  _ Isn’t that the deal you two made with me when I left Talon? Did either of you actually mean it?”

Wes clenched his jaw. “You can say that kind of thing to me. I don’t mind. But please don’t let Riley hear that when he comes back.”

Kain’s breath caught.

“Stay for as long as you need. I need to… tell the Order what happened. And finish going over financials. You’ll be okay without me for a few hours.”

He wouldn’t be okay  _ period,  _ but Wes was already gone, and Astatine was still muttering on the floor. Kain took a breath, gave himself another minute to keep thinking that he  _ couldn’t handle this,  _ and stood up. It didn’t matter than he couldn’t. He didn’t exactly have a choice.

He knelt beside Astatine. 

“ _ Stupid fucking Hamsah and his stupid fucking guilt complex and his stupid fucking Viper training and fuck Dante for dying on him, he needed him, fuck it I need Hamsah, he ever fucking think of that before he left for China? Ever fucking think that— _ ”

“Astatine.”

“And fuck you too, Kain.”

Kain tried not to flinch, because he remembered that he had cursed Riley with everything he had after Isaac died. Cursing felt better than the bitterness in his chest that didn’t have anywhere else to go.

Dante was dead. Hamsah was in China. And a few months ago, he would’ve let that drown him like he let Isaac’s death drown him, but that wasn’t a choice anymore.

God, hadn’t he lost enough people? Was this  _ really  _ what he got for trying to recover from Isaac?  _ Really? _

“I think we should go back to your room,” Kain said. “I can make soup. Food usually helps with this sort of thing.”

“I don’t  _ need you.  _ You— you don’t need to  _ help me,  _ you’re not Hamsah—”

It wasn’t Astatine talking to him. He had to remember that. It wasn’t Astatine talking, the same way it hadn’t actually been him who tried to attack Garret. 

He wanted very much to be not-him, right now. It sounded better.

“You need me more than I  _ ever  _ needed you, I don’t want your help or your pity or your— don’t you  _ dare  _ try to comfort me, I don’t  _ fucking need it— _ ”

He gave up on getting her upstairs. Wes said that they could stay in his room for as long as they needed.

*

Kain was  _ not  _ Hamsah. He knew that. But he had a distinct feeling that Hamsah wouldn’t know how to deal with this, either. Because Astatine hadn’t had anyone die on her, before.

He didn’t remember most of the day where he learned Dante died. He woke up in his bedroom, though, with Hamsah’s bed still empty and Dante’s cot long-since moved to the basement, and they had really just shoved their problems into the basement, didn’t they? He went downstairs and made breakfast, like he always did, because no one in this underground could cook. 

Isaac had known how to cook. He had been able to cook better than Kain, but burned every baked thing they tried to make together, like he was cursed.

Kain shook his head and cracked an egg into the pan with strictly more force than necessary. He didn’t want to linger on memories like that, back when, when Isaac was still alive and Kain was  _ whole.  _ And then he wasn’t, and he had to accept that he’d never be again.

Kain didn’t want to be  _ Kain,  _ right now. 

The sun rose. Others started waking up, taking plates as he made them. He could hear soldiers doing their morning exercises, as if they still had a chapterhouse and this was still business as usual. Sage came down and told him that Astatine wasn’t coming out of her room, and he’d probably have to take something up to her. And Kain reminded himself that he had to be himself, right now, he couldn’t retreat into whatever spiked, angry shell kept him safe, because he had gone through this before. He was the one with experience.

“Mist told us what happened,” Sage continued, taking over plating. “You good?”

“I’m…” Kain paused, because lying didn’t work with subjects like this. “It’s better than Isaac, so you don’t need to worry about me running off and trying to kill St. George as a whole. Just give me a week. Is anyone hunting today?”

“Uh… Nettle is, I think. There’s a coyote pack that she’s been tracking down. Why, do you want to give it a try?”

“No depth perception, dumbass,” Kain reminded her. Sage snorted, then coughed. Kain winced. 

“ _ That  _ sounds like you,” he replied. “You’re not going to swear at Cobalt and Wes this time, right? There are rumors around that Cobalt’s taking China really hard.”

“Good. He deserves it,” Kain said. Sage passive-aggressively plated an egg in Kain’s direction. “Sorry. Can you tell Nettle to Astatine hunting with her?”

“She’s practically blind.”

“Yeah, but she’ll benefit from being outside and focusing on doing something other than brooding. And I need to… think.”

Sage shrugged, rolling his shoulder back subtly and shifting on his feet.

“Take a plate and sit down,” Kain ordered. “I know you’re in pain.”

“Am not,” Sage retorted. 

“Do it, or I’m leaving you to make dinner alone.”

“ _ Fuck. _ ” 

Sage left him alone to finish making breakfast. Cracking eggs into pans. Frying sausage. Snapping at anyone who tried to steal food before he plated it, because the last thing they needed was people sharing food and getting sick. 

Trying to think, too.

It didn’t matter that Dante was dead. Dante had tried to kill him and lied about it, and that was that. He didn’t need to waste energy on him. Dealing with Ember’s grief would be difficult, since so many people looked up to her, but they had gone weeks without her by now. They didn’t need her, and Kain, for one, didn’t  _ want  _ her, either. And Hamsah would  _ hurt,  _ and a big part of Kain was pissed that he just  _ left  _ him and Astatine, but he’d be back as soon as he and Jade finished whatever they were doing. It wouldn’t be forever. He just had to remember that, and he had to make sure Astatine remembered. That was all.

He made a plate for Astatine and turned the stove off, deciding someone else could handle dishes.

%

Astatine seemed to enjoy hunting. She also seemed to enjoy demolishing the Bermuda girls in Monopoly and getting her ass kicked by Williams. She didn’t enjoy sitting next to Kain in complete silence, followed by muttering or screaming about how much she hated Dante and Hamsah, but she did it fairly often. She also usually apologized about the things she said about Hamsah—  _ insane, dependant, he tried so hard, he cared about everything, too soft, too vulnerable, he’s going to die—  _ but screaming seemed to help. 

Kain came to realize that he must have gotten all of his screaming hatred out of the way when Isaac died, because when he hated Hamsah for leaving them in this situation to galavant across China and get himself killed, he did it quietly. When he hated Dante for being Dante, he did it quietly, too.

He did it fairly often, though, so maybe he was just better at hiding his emotions than a fifteen-year-old.

“Ember’s coming back tomorrow,” Nettle walked into the kitchen cautiously, bare feet padding softly on the floor. Kain had spent most of the past three days in the kitchen or around Astatine, but he was starting to think it made him too easy to find.

Well. These dragons weren’t about to start feeding themselves, and none of them could get their lazy asses up to learn to cook themselves.

“You and she are good friends, right?” Kain asked. Nettle hummed an affirmation. “Good. She’ll need friends.”  
“You know… she could probably use you. And it might be good for you, being around someone who cared about him.”

“Dante and I weren’t  _ friends _ .”

There was a silence. Kain closed his eye, rubbed a hand over his face, and remembered that he had been dealing with powdered sugar and now his face would be gross for the end of time. Fucking dumbass.

“What are you making?”

“Beignets. They’re a comfort food.”

Nettle nodded. “You know… I know I tried to punch you that one time. I’m sorry for that. And we’re not friends by any stretch of the means. But I know that Dante’s a sensitive topic for everyone, so I promise I won’t judge if you want to talk to me. No matter what you think of him. What you’re doing right now isn’t healthy.”

“I’m not known for dealing with things healthily,” Kain muttered. “I’m the one who tried to fistfight a soldier of St. George.” Nettle leaned against the counter and snagged a beignet. 

Kain had made those to get his appetite back. They weren’t working.

“I’m just… I was doing  _ better.  _ After Isaac, I kind of went off the rails. I hated St. George, and I  _ hated  _ Riley. And the underground helped me from going completely insane, but I wasn’t  _ better  _ by the Night of Fang and Fire. I was still bitter and angry and…” He took a breath. Pursed his lips shut. He half hoped someone would come in and try to steal his food, because he didn’t want to keep talking.

But it was hard to stop.

“I wasn’t myself. I didn’t even know who myself was anymore because— Isaac and I got out within three weeks of each other, you know. We pretty much rebuilt ourselves together, and then he was  _ gone,  _ and— and then that Night happened, and I was just…”

He wanted to stop talking. He really wanted to stop talking.

“I was  _ fucked.  _ I was so completely fucked, and I met Dante, and he was just as fucked up as I was, and it was so, so nice not to be alone anymore. Because I know that Jem talked to me after Isaac died and I lived with Sage for a few months, but they pitied me  _ so fucking much  _ and I wasn’t ready to move on, and— and I met Dante, and I met Hamsah and Astatine, and I was still broken but at least I wasn’t broken  _ alone. _ ” He laughed. “Well. I guess that Astatine wasn’t broken at the time. Funny how betrayal and death do that to someone. Which— which I have to deal with, because Hamsah left, like an asshole, and Dante’s dead and Astatine and I are both refusing to admit that we miss him because I  _ hate  _ the bastard. I hate him for what he did, and I hate him for being a good friend, and I hate him for dying. And I hate talking to you.”

His hands were shaking. He didn’t know when they had started.

“Because I know exactly who I want to talk to this about. I want to talk to Dante, and— and I want to talk to Isaac. And they’re both fucking  _ dead,  _ and I’m here. And I—”

He finally managed to shut his mouth and keep it shut, like he was supposed to. Talking wouldn’t do anything. Talking with Nettle of all people was bordering on pathetic. He straightened, took his plate of Beignets, and retreated up the stairs and to his room. 

When Dante came back, he was planning to talk with him. Not forgive him, but talk. Because he wanted both of them to get closure.

He didn’t know how long he sat on his bed, his head in his hands, focusing on the breath in his lungs and the pulse in his chest. He faintly registered the room growing golden, then purple, then dark. He didn’t respond to Sage when he opened the door and went to bed. He just sat. He barely even thought.

When the house quieted, he forced himself to stand. He took a spiral-bound notebook and crept downstairs, avoiding the second-to-last stair that creaked. There were still so many people in the mainroom, sleeping in the warmth that the fireplace provided, but the Bermuda girls slept like the dead. It wasn’t hard to sit by the hearth and write. It wasn’t well-written. He had always been a horrible writer, according to his teachers in the organization. But it’s not like anyone would actually read this.

An hour passed next to the fireplace, embers casting an orange glow over the mainroom, dragonelles sleeping around him. He folded the paper carefully under his fingers. And without fanfare, set it into the fire.

He didn’t stay to watch it burn.

*

_ Dante, _

_ I don’t know if this will find you. I don’t know if you’re real, anymore. I think I’m writing this for myself more than I am for you. But assuming you’re still out there in some capacity, and you remember what happened before you died, and you still care, and you can actually read this, I hope it will help. _

_ I forgive you. Talon didn’t give you much of a choice in what to do with your life, and you couldn’t see right from wrong. I know that you can, now, and that you wanted to be better. I want to be better, too. I think I’ve suffered enough. I wish that I could do this in person, and that I could take the time I needed to forgive you properly. But I can’t, and the time we had is all the time we’ll ever get, and I can learn to make my peace with that.  _

_ I wish you the best, wherever you are.  _

_ Your friend, even now, _

_ Kain _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I was finally getting used to writing stories with parenthesis and suddenly I remember that CDtG writing style doesn't have parenthesis and I really want to use parenthesis, the next installment is going to be a TIME)
> 
> Alright. So. We have reached the end of yet another installment of Chasing Down the Gods, so it's time to have an Honest Conversation about when the next installment is coming out. There should only be one more book, but that's coming from the person who thought that Chasing Down the Gods was going to be two books at most, so... it depends.
> 
> Honestly, I don't know when I'm going to update next. I am not as enthusiastic as I once was over this series, I'm working two jobs at the moment, and there are a lot of other stories that I'm writing, and that have gotten more reception from the crowds. I try not to let that influence me, but external validation is a big motivator when I'm deciding what to spend my limited time/energy on. I'm probably going to re-read the series (might make some minor edits?? It's been two years since I wrote TaDitC) and try to get my hype back.
> 
> Check out my [ tumblr ](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/talonsaga-trash) for more information on other fanfictions/updates.

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone is handling things excellently.
> 
> Reviews are my lifeblood, so please: feed the author, don't poke the author.


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